Turns Out Liberalism Really Is a Mental Disorder
In an election year, it is pretty easy to get bogged down with lots of heavy, serious topics in the news. After three years of Joe Biden, we are definitely bogged down. High food and gas prices, crime, an invasion of illegal aliens, America is a laughingstock to our enemies, and we have a President with dementia, and a media desperately trying to cover it up so that he might actually be reelected again. Sometimes, you just need a break from all of that, and I thought this week might be a good time for a break from all the serious stuff. I think I found the perfect thing. As conservatives, we like to think of ourselves the way those who knew the great Andrew Breitbart describe him, as happy warriors. Yeah, things might be bad right now, but ultimately, we are Americans, we still live in the greatest country God gave man, and as that great military philosopher John Winger (a.k.a. Bill Murray in “Stripes”) put it, “We’re Americans, and we’ve been kickin’ ass for 200 (now almost 250) years!” With that in mind, on to the amusing stuff.
Recently, psychological researchers in Finland decided to put the happy warrior mentality to the test, at least in Finland. They created an assessment to determine just how committed someone is to the principles of social justice. The assessment offered some revealing findings, including measuring how woke someone is, compared to how happy they are. Turns out, conservative Finns are confirming what American conservatives already knew. The researchers did extensive reading on things like intersectional feminism (whatever the hell that is), critical race theory, queer theory, and just about anything else social justice warriors might be concerned with. The researchers put the “Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale” in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper.
The seven bullet points of woke people are:
“If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.”
“University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.”
“Microaggressions should be challenged often and actively.”
“Trans women* who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights.” (this item was reverse scored)
“We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.”
“A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.”
“A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural elements of a less privileged group.” (this item was also reverse scored).
Just one more tidbit from the survey, and here is my shocked face, is that there was a very clear gender gap, with three out of five women viewing woke ideology positively, to just one out of seven men. Just as shocking, more women who worked in fields such as social sciences, education, and humanities thought being woke was a good thing, compared to those in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). Thanks for that one Captain Obvious.
But perhaps the most compelling result of the survey had to do with mental health and happiness. The Finnish researchers took the first point in the scale, the sentence referring to an income gap between blacks and whites, and that it is the result of racism, and found that there was an exceptionally high prevalence of anxiety and depression among those who believed the statement. When that result was broadened out, those who identified as being “left-wing” also reported lower instances of mental well-being.
So, there you have it. For the crowd who is constantly telling us to “follow the science,” well, now we have, and we can say that what American conservatives have been saying all along is true. Liberalism really is a mental disorder. For most conservatives, it really is no surprise. We could have saved the researchers in Finland a whole lot of time and money by just doing a side-by-side comparison. Since we can still distinguish between classic John Kennedy liberals…for now, and the current crop of snowflakes who can’t tolerate an opposing viewpoint without needing a puppy and a safe space, let’s focus on the current crop. The John Kennedy liberals still have brain cells to speak of. The current crop of liberals really aren’t liberals at all. They call themselves things like Democratic Socialists, but it’s a nice way of saying straight-up communist. They are horribly entitled and think the world owes them a house, a job, education, healthcare, the list goes on and on. And when they find out that is not what is going to happen, well, you would be shocked to the point of depression too. When they go to a university, the former hippie professors teach them what a racist, sexist, imperialistic, capitalist pig nation they live in. Wow. That’s a lot for a young skull full of mush (a little Rush lingo there, couldn’t resist) to take in. Then, when they graduate from college, they discover their gender studies degree will not get them past being a Starbucks barista. Wait, I was supposed to start out as the CEO of something, making a 6-figure salary! I’m oppressed! It’s hard to be happy and not depressed yourself when you are so busy trying to control every aspect of other people’s lives and policing their thoughts and speech.
Conservatives get an entry-level job; they get an education in something that they can make a living at. They might not be wealthy, but they can pay the bills. They get married and have some kids. Maybe they buy a house in the suburbs because they have a good job, or maybe they move to a small town where the people are like them and share their values. They don’t expect nor want handouts from the government. They like being self-sufficient. They know those offended oppressed snowflakes hate them and everything they stand for. They know the snowflakes will call them racist, sexist, bigoted homophobes. They know their speech will be censored, and that they will generally be ridiculed. But they don’t care. Because they find their happiness in things like their faith, their families, and their profession, not in their ideology. Politics are just their beliefs.
When you look at the differences, it is pretty simple really. The next time the Finnish researchers want to conduct this survey, they should just take a trip to the U.S. They will get the same results with a lot less work.